It has happened to most everyone at one time or another. Being caught in a rain shower with a defective umbrella is as typical and as upsetting as being caught in a storm without any umbrella at all. Either a gust of wind will invert the fragile protective nylon covering or worse, rip the covering off of one of the support tips.
When the covering has ripped off one of its support tips, the umbrella takes on an embarrassingly pitiful form, its pitifulness increasing as other tips soon follow the separating trend. While the look is far less than professional, the effectiveness of an umbrella with its covering separated from one or more support tips is hopeful at best. The umbrella will allow rain to drain off at the point which is closest to its top, which, on a normal umbrella, will be at any end as the bottom ring is equidistant from the top. However, an umbrella's covering which is separated from the support tip is much closer to the top than the rest of the bottom ring. This will not only allow rain to directly fall unimpeded onto the user, but will also allow rain, which has been blocked by the umbrella's covering, to drain off the short, unattached side and fall indirectly onto the user. This unfortunate situation further accents the pitiful view of the wet user who huddles under the three-quarters of the umbrella which is not yet separated, and is still getting wet.
While an obvious solution to this problem is to purchase or carry a spare umbrella to use when the main umbrella breaks, this method can become burdensome physically and economically. No one enjoys carrying one umbrella much less two. Furthermore, the exact time of failure will not be immediately apparent, and the spare may be carried for an extended period of time without use. A light, inexpensive and quick fix product for the broken umbrella is what is needed to solve this annoying problem.